There are, of course, huge numbers of Tejano and country-music fans here. That's to be expected, given the state's rural heritage, the city's large Latino population and its proximity to Mexico. Other genres are also represented here and there.

And traditional rock music has always been popular here. As colleague Jim Beal Jr. wrote 12 years ago: "The Alamo City's love affair with rock music started about 15 seconds after the genre had a name."

But to newcomers, the city's enduring affinity for hard rock and metal - years after those sub-genres have been relegated to niche status everywhere else - is a puzzler.

Growing up on the edge of East Texas, I knew about S.A.'s reputation as a metal city. There were hard-rock stations relatively close in Houston, but the hardest rock music we could find came from the distant signal of KMAC, the AM wing of today's 99.5 KISS.

During daily high school lunch breaks, friends and I would drive to McDonald's, wolf down some Big Macs, top off our soft drinks with adult beverages and then cruise the streets of Bryan, trying to find the KMAC signal. When we found it, we would rock.

Name a metal or hard-rock band of the past 35 years, and they were getting standing ovations here before they could get arrested anywhere else.

Hard-rock legends such as Def Leppard, Rush, Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest and AC/DC got famous thanks to significant air play on KMAC/KISS at a time when stations in other cities wouldn't play their music. Even obscure hard-rock outfits, such as Canada's Moxy and Wales' Budgie, could always count on packed houses here.

That popularity continues today. I saw a high school kid wearing an Iron Maiden shirt in New Braunfels last month.

More recently, I was blasting Black Sabbath's first album via iPod through my car's speakers. A teenage girl working a fast-food drive-through on the South Side heard it and started smiling.

She turned to co-workers behind the counter.

"He's listening to Sabbath," she said, pointing at me. In the background, I saw a couple of them smile and toss in a few quick head bangs before getting back to work.

The small amount of hard rock being released these days does well here. And the older stuff, now called classic rock, still does well. When AC/DC and Def Leppard played their most recent shows here, each filled the AT&amp;T Center.

As late as 1997, the city still had a full-time heavy-metal station in KZDC.

The Alamo City's love for this music can be explained by three factors.

Anthony was the Godfather of Rock in San Antonio. Google him if you don't believe me. He and Lou Roney threw out the traditional rock format and banked on rebellion, says Tom "T-Bone" Scheppke, formerly of KZEP, KISS and now an on-air personality and programmer for X106.7.

"KMAC/KISS were legendary," he says. "It was the station that set up the whole South Texas hard-rock scene. It's why this town is so crazy about heavy metal."

In the mid-1970s, says Virgil Thompson, Cox Media Group programming vice president, FM radio was still an afterthought to most radio execs. The album-rock format of those stations - playing longer songs that hadn't been released as singles - was still considered experimental. Anthony and Roney were able to migrate that format to AM radio.

Though they pushed different styles of music via radio play and concerts, hard rock was the genre that resonated with a lot of local listeners.

"There was something going on in this market," Thompson says. "This music was infused with testosterone. San Antonio tends to embrace aggressive rock a little more than some other cities."

Other genres speak to hope and emotion. Hard rock embraces the moment. It's where instant gratification closes the deal, be it sex, substances or the general concept of "partying." "Tonight" is the extent of commitment you'll find in most rock songs.